As-grown iron precipitates and gettering in multicrystalline silicon

We report here the results of a theoretical study concerning the iron precipitation in multicrystalline silicon during crystal growth and its implications on phosphorus gettering. In our model the average size and density of iron precipitates in the final structure depends on the growth method, initial iron concentration and the density of possible heterogeneous precipitation sites. With the same model we can simulate phosphorus diffusion gettering (PDG) of iron in cast multicrystalline silicon by using the iron precipitate size distribution obtained from crystal growth simulations as initial condition for gettering. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.